Rex Murphy: A decision so dumb, only a government would make it

Some decisions are so strange, so inexplicable, that they defy analysis.

Way back when, there was a Liberal government in Ottawa that shifted a weather forecasting centre — a facility whose assigned zone included Newfoundland — to another province. Now I should give the federal authorities some credit: They didn’t move it to B.C. It was not a continent-wide shift. That was too much even for Ottawa. Instead, it was “only” moved to Nova Scotia. But as I hope to demonstrate, it may as well have been sent to the Sahara.

Previously, the weather centre for Newfoundland was in the centre of Newfoundland. Gander to be precise. But by a process and logic known only to the elected and bureaucratic wizards in the inland capital of Ottawa, it was decided that the more appropriate location was the capital city of another province.

Halifax is a beautiful place. It even has great weather. But Halifax is a long way from Lanse aux Meadows. It is a long way from the fabled Northeast Coast, where in spring the icebergs play and such fogs are generated as leave visitors agape and trembling. It bears no climactic commonality with Trepassey or Corner Brook, or Marystown or Joe Batts Arm. Halifax could be on Mars as far as having any relationship with the fearsome singularities of Newfoundland’s awesome atmospherics.

In this one respect, on the weather front, Newfoundland is unique. It stands alone, shrouded in impenetrable mists and answering to the rhythms of its own weather gods. Newfoundland weather is not a little like the world of subatomic physics; a buzz of random and paradoxical probabilities, a thing that may be observed but not measured or, contrariwise, measured but not observed, and not either, ever, from Halifax. It is a wonder and a despair.

Not surprisingly, the Liberals were smacked about very soundly for their decision, mocked and scorned by all rational observers everywhere. And, also not surprisingly, when that cold-hearted rationalist Stephen Harper finally made it, albeit as a minority leader, to the prime ministers’ chair, he moved the damn weather centre back from the exotic locale of Halifax to its proper and useful home in the centre of the island portion of my climatically wilful province.

“Three cheers for Stephen Harper” was the cry on every Newfoundlander’s lips for this move (there were other problems some may recall, but let’s stick to weather today, and talk about Danny Williams another time).

All this I recount only as prologue for an almost equally inexplicable choice, currently being considered by this same Stephen Harper, to another service in Newfoundland, even more central than that of the weather.

Scarcely had Mr. Harper captured the PM’s job again, this time as a majority leader in the last election, when one of his ministers came out with the equally ludicrous decision to move search-and-rescue operations: Last week, it was announced that the co-ordination centre in St. John’s (along with one in Quebec City) was slated for termination, with services relocated to Halifax and Trenton, Ont.

And according to reports circulating this week, the Department of National Defence’s search-and-rescue services might soon be privatized. (Currently, the job is done in partnership between DND and the Coast Guard, which is overseen by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans). If that happens, there’s no telling where the services would be relocated.

What is in the air in Ottawa? How do such absurd notions take root in the federal mind? Would they ever take similar steps in regard to, say, the regulation of Lake Ontario shipping?

Search and Rescue is not some toy service. It concerns life and death. And considering the tragedies that fret the history of the province over the centuries, this would not only be a wrong decision, but an offensive one, as well.

Naturally it is being, and has been, protested by everyone who can breathe and count to six. I cannot believe it will stand, and no one can believe it should. But the question remains: How could such an odd policy change be one the first considered by the majority government of an otherwise clear-thinking Prime Minister?

My only explanation is that it serves to illustrate this unshakeable axiom: Some decisions are so dumb that only governments can make them.

National Post

Rex Murphy offers commentary weekly on CBC TV’s The National, and is host of CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup.